Beware? Today is Friday the 13th

The dreaded day may not be any worse than any other day, but perception of superstition lives on.

August 12, 2010|By Riley Yates, OF THE MORNING CALL

Everyone knows it is only superstition that Friday the 13th is unlucky. But don't deny that you'll find yourself looking over your shoulder at least once as the dreaded day unfolds.

And when perception often defines reality, is Friday the 13th living up to our secret fears, even if they are intellectually unfounded?

Superstitious people, throw up your arms in protest now. Despite that one time you got in a fender-bender, it may be just another day.

Take Easton. Over five Friday the 13ths, there were 177 police calls for matters ranging from domestic disputes to car wrecks to public drunkenness. That's three fewer than the 180 calls on five Fridays that were not of the 13th persuasion.

The Morning Call tabulated calls from the past five Friday the 13ths (Nov. 13, 2009; March 13, 2009; Feb. 13, 2009; June 13, 2008; and July 13, 2007) versus the same Fridays of the year before (Nov. 14, 2008; March 14, 2008; Feb. 15, 2008; June 15, 2007, and July 14, 2006.)

Sure, there were three robberies reported in Easton on the unlucky days compared with zero on the others. But the blah days had five burglaries to one, and three weapons calls to zero. There were also — surprisingly, psychologically — more suspicious persons on the non-13th Fridays, at 41 to 33.

Ditto for Bethlehem, where police Lt. Mark DiLuzio said he reviewed calls and found no spike. He can point to one tragedy — the Friday, Jan. 13, 2006, discovery of a 10-month-old boy who died from an overdose of heroin — but says he doesn't think crime overall increases.

Nor did the number of applications for marriage licenses decrease on the dreaded day, though actual marriages may have. Forty-three couples filed in Northampton County on the past five Friday the 13ths — more than the 36 who applied on the same days the years before.

Didn't those 43 realize what they were getting themselves into?

"I don't think that has anything to do with it," said Melissa Binder, a deputy in Orphans' Court who processes marriage license applications. She guessed that the weather, and whether the couples could get a half day off to come to the courthouse, were more persuasive factors.

Tell that to the sports teams that keep 13 off jerseys or the hotels that lack a 13th floor. Or to clients of Judy Charla, an Allentown psychic and hypnotherapist who says she meets reluctance when scheduling Friday-the-13th appointments.

"The typical response is, 'Oh, I don't know whether I want to come in Friday the 13th,'" Charla said. "They always hesitate. I've had that three or four times."

From the position of the planets, Friday shouldn't be a bad one, Charla said. The moon, Venus, Mars and Saturn are all in Libra, suggesting a peaceful time, she said.

"That'll hold all the commotion down," she said.

Scientific studies aren't of much help for partisans on either side.

For instance, a 2002 examination by a University of Oulu, Finland, researcher found that women in Finland were 63 percent more likely to die in traffic accidents on Friday the 13th than on other Fridays.

The paper concluded that Friday the 13th may indeed be a dangerous day for women, largely because of their anxiety about the bad luck they're supposed to be facing.

The findings were contradicted two years later by a study from the University of Helsinki, which said women are just as likely to be hurt or killed in traffic accidents on other Fridays. Good news, ladies? Or bad?

The belief that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day has a long pedigree. The phobia associated with it has a seemingly even longer name: paraskevidekatriaphobia.

The day represents the pairing of two traditionally unlucky things: Friday and the number 13.

In the Bible, Friday is the day Christ was crucified. Thirteen also has a Christian reference, with the apostle who betrayed Jesus, Judas, counted as the 13th at the Last Supper. Fear of the number has been traced back further to Roman and Norse myths, as well.

But Jeffrey Rudski, a psychology professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown who studies superstition, said the origin of the fears of the day are really simpler than that, and self-perpetuating.

Someone hit with unforeseen troubles at any other time chalks it up to random misfortune and not the date it occurred, Rudski said. But if those problems occur on Friday the 13th, that same person is likely to note that fact as significant.

"It's called the confirmation bias in psychology," Rudski said.

Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Mulqueen, who prosecutes violent crime, is on call nights in the event bad things happen. She said in her experience there's nothing to show Friday the 13th is different.

"Friday the 13th doesn't seem to be a weird day," said Mulqueen, though she, like many in the criminal justice system, admits to another fear.

"Full moons, that's when I get nervous," she said.

One important footnote. In researching this story, this reporter's computer got a virus that shut it down for repairs.

That's never happened before and is enough to make even the most professionally skeptical journalist want to call in sick Friday.